Should Philosophy be Required?

[Justin S.]

I intent to respond individually to the other very provoking posts, but am very busy at the moment. I will post some later this weekend.

 

[Norsemaiden]

Is all valuing metaphysical? And, if so, does that mean that one shouldn't have a mental process of evaluating things? Isn't it inevitable that we must all have some sort of scale in our own minds of how much we value everything? There is so much phenomena to grade that no two people probably value everything exactly the same. Have I misunderstood you Justin?

It is frustrating that most people get their ideas by adopting the ideas of other people ( who they consider to be an authority) than they do by actually figuring things out for themselves. The fact is that if someone has little or no ability to judge things in a coherent way, they play it safe and just go with what the prevailing social norm appears to be on any subject, while insisting this is their own carefully considered conclusion. By manipulating perceptions of what the social norm is, the media can make the opinions of the population. Never vice-versa.

 

[Justin S.]

My plans fell through today, so I will be posting some after all (sorry for being such a tease )

Is all valuing metaphysical? And, if so, does that mean that one shouldn't have a mental process of evaluating things? Isn't it inevitable that we must all have some sort of scale in our own minds of how much we value everything? There is so much phenomena to grade that no two people probably value everything exactly the same. Have I misunderstood you Justin?

I need to clarify what I mean by "valuing": the attempt to project and assign value to things as if the value judgment is actually some intrinsic part of its existence or essence (not understanding it is merely a projection of desire). This is totally different from the feeling, thinking or emotion evoked by a relationship or encounter with something. The former mode is a claiming upon the object, as well as on all sorts of knowledge and "truths", the later is simply an openess to experience.

Valuing is metaphysical, it is nihilism in motion.

Also, we must be very careful with "evaluation". To evaluate does not imply such arbitrary constructs as ranking, scales, or grading. It simply means to perceive and contemplate phenomena. The desire to then claim "meaning" or "worth" upon something is a secondary process, and one that is directly in response to the shock that nihilism comes to Platonic metaphysics. Also, to "rank" things on some number system is truly bizarre and totally metaphysical- How to reduce and assign my bread, that hill, the warmth of the fire, or companionship, written symbols that follow in linear progression? This is absurd, and certainly not how we perceive phenomena.

 

[speed]

What? What do any of these examples have to do with metaphysics or any kind of predilection for metaphysical thinking? Perhaps I'm just taking issue with your use of the word "metaphysical". Correct me if I'm wrong, but you are talking about a particular set of metaphysical suppositions that society at large takes for granted, right? Most of these examples of yours can be analysed in terms of social phenomena, there is no need to attribute some kind of metaphysical thinking to individuals in these cases. So a media source proclaimed the "goodness" of some particular sounds and that is why people buy into it? Big deal, this is just a social phenomenon. Any valuing of said sounds on most other bases is just as theory-laden, for lack of a better term, or "metaphysical" I guess, as what you cite.

I think you are overly concerned with semantics cythraul, and missing the point, which transcended any of these rather trite concerns of yours. Justin S, just perfectly summarized--wonderfully too, using the present world--Heidegger. Heidegger couldnt even summarize heidegger. I still think his last couple of posts have been the best I've seen on this site. I'm even inspired to read Heidegger (whose utter lack of writing skills I detest), and even some Plato--who I come back to and agree with more and more--after reading his posts.

 

[derek]

I've spent quite the few hours this past week reading over this thread. Fascinating.

With more time, perhaps I can formulate some sort of reply.

 

[Cythraul]

I think you are overly concerned with semantics cythraul, and missing the point, which transcended any of these rather trite concerns of yours.

I'd appreciate it if you'd refrain from denigrating my (valid) questions regarding Justin's thoughts. I am concerned with semantics insofar as I am trying to get clear on exactly how we're using our terms here. That's important in a philosophical discussion. Other parts of my post were quite substantive, and not trite at all, contrary to what you're claiming. You're an intelligent guy and you should be able to see what I was getting at.

I'll respond to Justin at a later time.

 

[Demilich]

Valuing is metaphysical, it is nihilism in motion.

At risk of appearing trite and pedantic, I'd like a better explanation of this expression. How do you equate metaphysical value judgement with a negation of the value of such judgements?

 

[Justin S.]

At risk of appearing trite and pedantic, I'd like a better explanation of this expression. How do you equate metaphysical value judgement with a negation of the value of such judgements?

The statement follows from the prior elucidations, and is explained in the body of those posts (although I admit, it would take close reading to see the progression, as it initially seems very counter-intuitive).

I started with an exploration of "metaphysics" (deduction from higher principles). One aspect or mode of such systems is the act of valuing- a claiming upon things justified by, and traced to, said higher principles.

The irony here is that the valuing mind "doesnt understand what it is doing" (Heidegger)- as I said, "the impulse to "value" implies that the object has no "value" outside of this (subjectivizing) process!"

Here is the progression: Metaphysical systems are formed in response to the anxiety of nihilism- Rather than refute it, metaphysics confrims nihilism. The act of valuing is not only an aspect of metaphysics, but is the precise moment when nihilism is confirmed- where it is openly admitted that the object has no value outside the subjective claiming.

Hence,"Valuing is metaphysical, it is nihilism in motion."

 

[Silver Incubus]

But can't you value something because of its usefulness in acheiving a goal. A quick example might be a thristy person finding a container full of water? I mean water and thrist are not metaphysical in nature, and the need of a body to have that water is very real, and physical. I see that water has value regardless if we think it does or not, simply because without it life on this earth wouldn't exist.

 

[Demilich]

@Justin S.: I understand, and commend your efforts in constructing this argument, but am not sure I can wholeheartedly agree with what I see to be a fairly extensive leap in reasoning. Where you lose me is in the process of defining the bridge between the impulse to apply subjective value and subsequent affirmation of nihilism. To whom is this affirmation known at the time that it comes to fruition? Surely not those who are blind enough to engage in this subjectifying process of applying value. I would say that this metaphysical pursuit of a rigorously heirarchized/value-laden existence openly defies nihilism. To me, this is reaffirmed by my daily life experience, as I frequently encounter people who are incapable of removing themselves from their socially/culturally constituted understanding of their surroundings and thus unable to break from this subjectifying process of evaluation.

 

[speed]

@Justin S.: I understand, and commend your efforts in constructing this argument, but am not sure I can wholeheartedly agree with what I see to be a fairly extensive leap in reasoning. Where you lose me is in the process of defining the bridge between the impulse to apply subjective value and subsequent affirmation of nihilism. To whom is this affirmation known at the time that it comes to fruition? Surely not those who are blind enough to engage in this subjectifying process of applying value. I would say that this metaphysical pursuit of a rigorously heirarchized/value-laden existence openly defies nihilism. To me, this is reaffirmed by my daily life experience, as I frequently encounter people who are incapable of removing themselves from their socially/culturally constituted understanding of their surroundings and thus unable to break from this subjectifying process of evaluation.

You make some excellent points here. In essence, this idea of Heidegger's is not new--ive read similar thoughts from earlier thinkers without the bold step of claiming valuing is affirming nihilism--and essentially is pre-Socratic. I still like it though. It makes sense logically, just not as you say demilich, maybe biologically or socially. We all--philosophers and non-philosophers alike--create our own value systems based on our own subjective premises. Perhaps this is part of being human? Perhaps the human mind must do so.

 

[Justin S.]

But can't you value something because of its usefulness in acheiving a goal. A quick example might be a thristy person finding a container full of water? I mean water and thrist are not metaphysical in nature, and the need of a body to have that water is very real, and physical. I see that water has value regardless if we think it does or not, simply because without it life on this earth wouldn't exist.

You misunderstand how I was using the term "value/valuing". Again, some sort of positive response to phenomena (ie "water feels great when thirsty, I like water, water enables life") is not "water is categorically "good"'. One is an experienced relationship, the other an appeal to higher principles. Often we use "value" in all sorts of ways, which adds to the confusion. Rather then debate every usage and meaning, Im trying to clarify the relationships present in the different uses of the term(s) within my chosen topic.

 

[Norsemaiden]

Can things have "value" without someone or something to subjectively appreciate that value? I suppose a creature is unaware of the value of oxygen (for example) but it is still necessary for a human to appreciate its value to the creature for it to have value at all isn't it? Something's value is like something's beauty - it must be beheld and appreciated for it to exist.
(I've probably not understood again....)

 

[Justin S.]

Where you lose me is in the process of defining the bridge between the impulse to apply subjective value and subsequent affirmation of nihilism. To whom is this affirmation known at the time that it comes to fruition? Surely not those who are blind enough to engage in this subjectifying process of applying value.

The key here is the nature of assertion (belief)- A proclaiming that serves not simply to convince others, but oneself, to combat doubt. Whether one consciously accepts it or not, the motivation and origin for a metaphysical assertion is the anxiety caused by the anticipation of its emptiness and refutation. This fundamental mood or dread is not consciously acknowledged, but nonetheless spurs the conscious response of metaphsyics. Perception preceeds this valuing- things appear as they are before we have a chance to impose claims upon them. Only after this primordial stare into the "valueless" abyss of things as they are comes the fearful, reactive attempt to assert that constructed meaning and value are absolute.

To answer you question, this undermining of ones own valuing is known and felt by everyone.

I would say that this metaphysical pursuit of a rigorously heirarchized/value-laden existence openly defies nihilism.

Certainly it appears that way superficially (the stated goal), but when we examine the motivations with greater depth, we arrive at all sorts of questions. Why the need to defy nihilism if there is no such thing, if it is simply a phantom? If nihilism was not a reality, we would not speak of it, and there would be no attempted "defiance" of it. To construct value implies that there is emptyness outside this creation- I dont know how I can state this more clearly.

To me, this is reaffirmed by my daily life experience, as I frequently encounter people who are incapable of removing themselves from their socially/culturally constituted understanding of their surroundings and thus unable to break from this subjectifying process of evaluation.

And why is this? Why do their affirmations build and build like a giant wall? To repulse something that is not a reality? No, it is because the fundamentalist is precisely the one who does not believe in what he speaks. Let me use a hasty illustration. A person is clinging to a small, constructed support floating in a void. The more this person percieves the blackness and isolation, the stronger their grip, the more they dig in their nails and bury their senses. So it goes for those who close themselves off to thinking- it is their ceaseless, destructive entrenchment against their fears and doubts, not a sign of singular, firm belief. Fundamentalism is an ideal of metaphysics, not the reality of human psychology.

 

[Cythraul]

By "metaphysical" I mean the process of thought that works down from "higher principles". This origin can take many forms: God(s), the One, "truth", the "self-evident", "logic" (deduction), the "they" of acculturation, etc.

I see. Thank you for clarifying this. I must say, I'm with you in repudiating these sorts of systems. Our knowledge, our total theory of the world is gleaned not from any higher, or self-evident principles, nor can it be. I suggest that you read up on the holistic, naturalized epistemological views of W.V. Quine. Quine was an analytic philosopher but I think you'd find much to sympathize with in his writings. I think reading Quine has vastly changed my outlook on a lot of things within a very short period of time.

What Nietzsche implicitly addressed, Heidegger explicitly confronted- "philosophy" (the world historical phenomena) = metaphysics. Norsemaiden, this is essentially what your quote from Zarathustra means. All these elaborate systems and constructs, are just that, and have no more solid grounding that any other. For Nietzsche, this understanding leads into discussion of nihilism. For Heidegger (as well as the movements influenced by his thinking) the abyss of "nihilism" is actually the opportunity to perceive beings as they are- without subjecting the universe to subjectivising "values" and "categories" as if they require such things. As we discover, not the absence of metaphysics, but metaphysics itself is nihilism- the impulse to "value" implies that the object has no "value" outside of this process! The traditions we speak about (philosophy/religion/metaphysics) are simply a reaction to the abyss of nihilism, one they only confirm by their elaborate attempts to cover it over with grand systems.

I'm not quite sure what to say about all of this nihilism stuff. I do like your comment about none of these elaborate systems having any more solid grounding than any other. I don't regard any of our claims about anything as resting on some foundation or other. Rather, our decision to treat certain statements as foundational is a pragmatic one.

What is the "social phenomena" except the generalization of the thoughts and practices of many individuals? One cannot formulate a whole comprised of parts, and then speak of the whole removed from its component parts- this is metaphysical.

What I was trying to get across is that certain phenomena can be accounted for in terms of brute human tendencies. Let the metaphysical views fall where they may. For example, the propensity of individuals to buy into certain things is quite frequently the result of brute human desires. Now you might claim that these desires are shaped by notions, including metaphysical notions, acquired through socialization and upbringing. But how much of this do you really think is tied up with acquired metaphysical notions, and how would you go about answering that question?

More than just thinking, the individual has a metaphysical relationship to its world. To return to my art example, the average person when viewing art accesses (from "higher principles") an acculturated experience of the artwork. Although their eyes see it, their mind passes over the lines, forms, shapes and color of the work. They may make passing comments on such things, but they do not evaluate it based on how it is perceived phenomenologically- no, it is not color on canvas, it is the "Mona Lisa"- what is this "Mona Lisa" to these individuals? Not its component parts forming a painting, but the stand alone metaphysical entity that is given meaning by shared cultural experience.

Ok, you are making a broad empirical claim about how other people experience the Mona Lisa, and this is supported by what? Anyway, if your claim is correct it still just seems to me that this is the tendency of people, uneducated in artistic matters, to buy into hype. I have no clue what you mean when you say that the Mona Lisa is regarded as a "stand alone metaphysical entity".

Ok, I think I'm catching on to your point. Nevertheless, I think implicitly you are assuming some kind of dichotomy between matters of fact and matters of value. Do you really think that we can pry apart bare sensation of a thing from our imposition of values on that thing? Our discourse about the world is literally rife with valuation. It's bound up with so many of our basic concepts that I really can't see how you can conceptually pry it from said concepts. Our experience of art really reduces to nothing if we were to eliminate our evaluative language, or it just reduces to passive indifference. I can say of something that it is blue, and that is merely descriptive in nature. But there are a host of statements which are irreducibly evaluative in character yet descriptive at the very same time. For instance, the statement "She is cruel". This kind of evaluative language is central to our experience of art, and it's central to our experience of life. We are not robots.

But I think your point is that we can retain a certain amount of our evaluative language, and you are proposing that our more abstract evaluative notions of "good", etc. are mistaken? Is this a correct reading? We can still say of something that it is good, and we might say it's good for such and such a reason but we need a more austere account of what makes something valuable. Perhaps I'm missing your point. I'm very tired right now. Sorry.

 

[Cythraul]

Perception preceeds this valuing- things appear as they are before we have a chance to impose claims upon them. Only after this primordial stare into the "valueless" abyss of things as they are comes the fearful, reactive attempt to assert that constructed meaning and value are absolute.

You've confirmed my suspicions. I'm inclined to believe that much of our perception is bound up with concepts which you'd be inclined to say are distinct from mere perception. How do you come to learn about cruelty for instance? You cannot separate the evaluative component from the factual component in a statement of the form "x is cruel". Accordingly, evaluating someone as cruel is inextricably bound up with your perceiving someone's cruelty. We do not come into the world with some stock of "ises", and then we impose a bunch of "oughts" onto the world. Much of our perception and our thought and talk about the world involves the application of concepts, concepts which have irreducibly value-laden components. In fact, values are inseperable from rational discourse, the very kind of discourse we're trying to engage in right now, and which we have to engage in everyday. Let the metaphysics of value fall where it may.

 

[Norsemaiden]

In fact, values are inseperable from rational discourse, the very kind of discourse we're trying to engage in right now, and which we have to engage in everyday.

That's true. Now I get it Justin! Nothing has value apart from that which we apply to it. We, ourselves, have no value other than that. We all inescapably value things though, because one has to prioritise the things needed for one's survival.

Most people are unaware or unwilling to realise that they are attributing value to things that have no value beyond that attributed in the mind. Wheras animals automatically prioritise what they need to survive and do not have a concept of "value", most humans cling to their "metaphysical" notion of the value of things. Others of us, who "think" more freely, are uninhibited from observing that the values we attribute to things are merely in the human mind.

We are not wise to drop our perception of value altogether however, and say "Aha! No thing has value, therefore I will value no thing!" (completely nihilistic) because this would be a negation of everything in life as well as a negation of oneself.

 

[Tongue_Ring]

That's true. Now I get it Justin! Nothing has value apart from that which we apply to it. We, ourselves, have no value other than that. We all inescapably value things though, because one has to prioritise the things needed for one's survival.

Most people are unaware or unwilling to realise that they are attributing value to things that have no value beyond that attributed in the mind. Wheras animals automatically prioritise what they need to survive and do not have a concept of "value", most humans cling to their "metaphysical" notion of the value of things. Others of us, who "think" more freely, are uninhibited from observing that the values we attribute to things are merely in the human mind.

We are not wise to drop our perception of value altogether however, and say "Aha! No thing has value, therefore I will value no thing!" (completely nihilistic) because this would be a negation of everything in life as well as a negation of oneself.

i agree with this
and not only just cuz it's the only post on this thread that i could understand

 

[Justin S.]

Thank you for taking time to respond Cythraul, although there are still a few key misunderstandings.

I fear that I have caused this thread to stray a bit much, so I will attempt to respond as concisely and precisely as I can to your (all posters) criticisms, as well as connect this tangent back to the original theme of philosophical education (over several posts of course ). If time and energy permit, I would later like to explore some brief ideas about Plato that one of Speed's replies prompted.

First though, we must settle the confusion over "value". This word, like all others, has a plurality of meanings and contexts, many of which have been used interchangeably in this thread, hindering our communication. Some examples of its usage: "What a value" (bargain, favorable economic exchange), "dont take it at face value" (initial appraisal, impression), "I value your companionship" (hold in high regard, esteem), "this cars totaled, it has no value" (economic potential), "you have poor values" (ethics, morals), "value is constructed" (worth, reverence), "the value of oxygen to humans" (enabling condition, practical worth), etc.

In the context of my argument, I describe a very precise context and relationship (this is key!) for my use of "value/to value/valu-ing". The verb form is important, the emphasis being on an action. I describe a dichotomy of modes: one, a response to experienced phenomena, which will certainly evoke evaluative thought/language (thanks Cythraul) that is contextualized in this relationship of subjective experience. There are no categorical statements made about the phenomena as such, but simply the experience of it, even if linguistic utterances technically mirror such statements. The other is, as I said before, a claiming upon things, assertions about the things as such. Here, the relationship is removed from experience and instead accesses constructed "higher principles" for the evaluation. The former a relationship between phenomena and experience, the latter a projection upon phenomena derived from human fantasy.

@Cythraul: You wrote, "But I think your point is that we can retain a certain amount of our evaluative language, and you are proposing that our more abstract evaluative notions of "good", etc. are mistaken? Is this a correct reading?" Yes, very much so, as I think my paragraph above will make clear. If I understand your later post correctly though, I disagree with you on perception.

Something must be perceived (the data our senses can detect) before any evaluation can be made. In other words, there must be a noun before you can modify it with an adjective. Furthermore, there must be phenomena before we can name it with a noun. As in your example, the act or person can only be deemed "cruel" after the act or person is perceived to exist. The evaluation of the scene then registers with us as something "cruel". A child must learn to recognize patterns of behavior deem cruel, it is not innate. Much of why we think evaluation comes simultaneously with perception is we learn very quickly patterns of culturally understood meaning- put oneself in a totally alien environment and a great deal of confusion will arise as one struggles to "come to terms" with this new situation. Initially things will be as they are, without familiar patterns and judgments to fall back on.

Also, this experience of things-as-they-are, prior to our claiming, is the key aspect of the value/nihilism relationship I discussed earlier.

Thats it for now, Im getting some food.